As of Wednesday 9 April 2025, I just timed the commercial content of a
local 5:00 PM news broadcast as just about 10.5 minutes out of a 30 minute
slot. And I just timed the commercial
content of a national broadcast news program as 10 minutes out of a 30 minute
slot starting at 5:30 PM. That
corresponds to 36.7% commercial local,
and 33.3% commercial nationally.
In both cases, the
majority of the commercial content was in the second half of the 30 minute time
slot, which really means during that
second half of the news program, there
was actually more commercial time than there was news time!
These stations are supposedly licensed by the FCC to
broadcast “in the public interest”.
Commercials in a news program are not in the public interest, they clearly are in the profit interest of
the advertisers. It is only the news
content that is actually in the public interest! That is obvious even to the casual observer, no matter how the lawyers might spin it!
In the 1950’s and 1960’s,
a typical hour-long prime-time program had 51 or 52 minutes of
content, and 8 or 9 minutes of
commercials. That corresponds to 13-15%
commercials. (Most programs were only a
half-hour long back then, but at about
that same percentage commercials.) You
can time the DVD’s of those old programs for yourself!
In the 1980’s, this
had changed to around 42 to 44 minutes of program, and 16-18 minutes of commercials in an hour
time slot in prime time. That is 27-30%
commercials, about double the commercial
percentage of 2+ decades earlier!
Now, 4 decades since
the 80’s, it is even higher at
33-37%, right there in prime time news
broadcasts! Outside prime time, it appears to be even higher commercial
content! When flipping channels, it often seems like there’s more commercials than
content.
As a case in point,
on Thursday 4-10-2025, I scrolled
through all 36 channels that I can pick up with a rabbit-ears antenna, between 2:10 and 2:15 PM. Two of those are shopping channels (all
commercials), and one is a weather
update (no commercials). Those 3 don’t
count. The rest all show content with
commercials. As I scrolled through, I counted 13 out of that 33 as showing
commercials, not content. That’s an empirical estimate of 39.4%
commercials in non-prime time!
So, how does so much
commercial time actually qualify as “broadcasting in the public interest”?
Is there no law or regulation limiting this commercial
content? If not, there should be!
And I suspect there once upon a time there was at least a regulation, which was quietly done away with, long ago. It was eliminated simply so that the advertisers could make more money! Probably at the behest of the politicians those advertisers bought.
Update 1-18-2026: I just saw that the classic movie "How the West Was Won", is scheduled for a 4 hour time slot IN PRIME TIME on the Outlaw western channel, shown on broadcast television here in Waco as channel 46.2. I'm talking broadcasting by profit-seeking stations here, not public broadcasting!
A 4-hour time slot is 240 minutes. Fact. The movie as listed on my DVD is 155 minutes long in its original form. Fact. 155/240 = 0.6458, leaving 0.3542 = 35.42% commercial content! And that's just factual math.
EXCEPT that all these stations speed through the credits, so that they can show even more commercial content! And THAT puts it at around 37% commercials and 63% content, IN PRIME TIME! This is even WORSE when not in prime time! It always has been! Late night stuff is nearly half commercials!
Compare that with 1966's "Star Trek" TV series, at 51 minutes per episode per the DVD's of the original shows, aired in a 1-hour (60-minute) prime time slot. That is 51/60 = 0.85 content, and so only 0.15 = 15% commercials! That is significantly less than half the commercials we are forced to put up with today! Only 6 decades ago!
And THAT PROVES my thesis that commercial content in prime time has gone entirely out of control!
There used to be regulations that limited this. FCC, if those regulations still exist, PLEASE ENFORCE THEM! If they do not, then Congress, please enact legislation to put such regulations back into place! And demand that the FCC enforces them!
My readers: if the FCC and Congress will not fix this, then vote instead for somebody who will, not the representation that you currently have. It DOES NOT MATTER who they are or what party they come from! You absolutely cannot do worse, than what you have in office right now!
This plea has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with politics, and everything to do with greedy parasites wasting your precious time for their profit!
-----
I would argue it is not the advertisers who make more money, but rather the broadcaster who charges them for the airtime.
ReplyDeleteNot that this matters one wit, because what matters is that the saturation of adverts has replaced entertainment.
This why we only subscribe where adverts are not shown. I know, how very anti-capitalist of me, but I remember when adverts were entertaining in ways that seem to escape the modern iterations we see today.
Call me an old fogey.
What you said is true, in and of itself. I would point out that when pharmaceutical firms were allowed to advertise to the public instead of only doctors, their sales jumped by factor 10. So what I said is also true. -- GW
Delete